“To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.”

It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.

If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman… because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.

Talent is a gift which God has given us secretly, and which we reveal without perceiving it.

Trade is the best cure for prejudice.

It is difficult for the united states to be all of equal power and extent.

Knowledge humanizes mankind, and reason inclines to mildness; but prejudices eradicate every tender disposition.

The love of study is in us the only lasting passion. All the others quit us in proportion as this miserable machine which holds them approaches its ruins.

In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.

Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws: the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws.

Virtue is necessary to a republic.

Virtue has needs of limits.

The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.

The pagan religion, which prohibited only some of the grosser crimes, and which stopped the hand but meddled not with the heart, might have crimes that were inexplicable.

Peace is a natural effect of trade.

The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.

The false notion of miracles comes of our vanity, which makes us believe we are important enough for the Supreme Being to upset nature on our behalf.

The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.

Many homicidal lunatics are very quiet, unassuming people. Delightful fellows.

Never relax, for you will not attain to the possession of true spiritual delights if first you do not learn to deny your every desire.

She is delightfully chaotic; a beautiful mess. Loving her is a splendid adventure.

You build inner strength through embracing the totality of your experience, both the delightful parts and the difficult parts.

To love is to be delighted by the happiness of someone, or to experience pleasure upon the happiness of another. I define this as true love.

The Sun, the hearth of affection and life, pours burning love on the delighted earth.

Let me enjoy the earth no less because the all-enacting light that fashioned forth its loveliness had other aims than my delight.